Ryan Seacrest Owns The (NYE) Night

GetGlue is a service that lets you micromanage your activities with mind-numbing detail as you can “check in” to what shows your watching, what you’re reading, or even what song your listening to. It’s essentially a form of data collection that firms like Nielsen have collected from people except now you can do it voluntarily and then share this minutiae with people you know (for now, at least, until they get fed up with seeing your media consumption). Think of how people on your Facebook feed will Like an article they read or post something they listened to on Spotify – this is a service that covers all that media in one single place.

Anyways, the data for the December 26 through January 1 have been released and it appears that people greatly prefer to check-in the new year with Ryan Seacrest’s boyish mug than Anderson Cooper’s silver-topped noggin. 2-to-1 prefer Seacrest and the rest of the Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, in fact, as the program “gave the network its largest audience in 11 years and its strongest showing among adults 18-49 in 8 years,” Nielsen reports.

What’s more is that Animal Planet had a strong showing with their “Finding Bigfoot” special during the last week of 2011. From GetGlue:

The most notable series entrant in our Top 10 this week is Animal Planet’s “Finding Bigfoot,” with its Sunday night “Baby Bigfoot” (awwwww!) episode. Per Animal Planet’s episode summary: “The bigfoot research team heads to New York to investigate video of an alleged baby bigfoot. When locals report bigfoot activity in the neighboring woods, the team tries a new search method in hopes of finding bigfoots near the Big Apple.”

Honestly, these might be happy numbers for assorted television executives but all this data shows me is a missed opportunity. Really, think about the number of check-ins that a ABC-Animal Planet crossover could’ve garnered if Ryan Seacrest had set out to locate Baby Bigfoot on New Year’s Eve and then retrieved the furry little tyke just in time to plant a big smooch on Mama Bigfoot as the ball dropped to commence the beginning of 2012. Nobody, and I mean nobody, would even remember that awkward midnight kiss between NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Lady Gaga.